Slovakia's language law

Churches in Hungary and Slovakia must promote "dialogue and reconciliation" amid political hostilities, said Milos Klatik, bishop of the Evangelical [Lutheran] Church of the Augsburg Confession and head of the Slovak Ecumenical Council of Churches. Klatik responded to a Sept. 1 law giving Slovak language precedence for the country's Hungarian-speaking minority — 10 percent of the population. In Klatik's church, ethnic members have Hungarian-speaking pastors, he said, calling it "a Reformation principle that every church member should hear the gospel in their mother-tongue."